Marsha's Musings: Widows

My Quiet Time:

Honor widows who are really widows. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents; for this is good and acceptable before God. Now she who is really a widow, and left alone, trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day. But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives. And these things command, that they may be blameless. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (I Timothy 5:3-8 NKJV)

It seems to me that Paul's definition of a widow is a woman whose husband has died and who does not have any children or grandchildren.  In the culture of that day, families lived together or very near each other.  So a widow was one who had no family at all left and she was all alone.

I am not sure what Paul was saying when he talks about a widow living in pleasure being dead while she lives.  The only thing I can come up with is that he must have meant some sort of immoral pleasures.  I can't imagine that he would mean she must be unhappy and sad the rest of her life.

He talks about her children and grandchildren learning to show piety at home and repaying their parents.  Later he says if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.  This is spoken in the context of looking out for the widows in one's family.  I often hear and have used this verse myself referring more to parents providing for their families.  This is a backwards use of this scripture since it is referring more to children providing for their widowed parents.

In our culture, it has become the norm for elderly and widowed parents to go on medicaid and be put in nursing homes in their elder years.  These are difficult scriptures.  With the children holding full time jobs and living miles away, homes not built to accomodate extra people, and finances getting tighter for all, how are we to do what this says we are supposed to do?

 

This is vexing to me.  I live two hours away from my parents.  They are getting to where they need more help and I can not get there on a regular basis to help them. Bringing them here when they can no longer live alone is out of the question because our house has stairs everywhere and doctors here are not interested for the most part in taking on any more patients.  They are established with all their doctors where they live.  So I find myself in a catch twenty two, not really knowing what I can do.  Lord help me to have wisdom to know how I can help them.